The Magician and the Porcelain Doll
by LeaCharmedOne
Summary: He doesn't have magic to make everything better but he sees that's she, his porcelain doll, is not broken anymore. spoilers till 5x06


Matt Donovan wipes the Mystic Grill's bar down, a stupid drunk spilled two bottles of beer, and it's the same every day. He's twenty-six and hasn't escaped Mystic Falls in fact he owns the Grill and still is taking night classes at the community college for a degree in Business.

* * *

Everyone's moved on but him.

_His life is still the same._

The supernatural is still intertwined with this town but all his supernatural friends are gone.

_They got out he didn't._

Everyone except Elena Gilbert.

* * *

He chuckles to himself, the Elena Gilbert he watches walk into the bar sitting down with a dark haired man isn't his friend. Well she is, but she's playing a game.

_Katherine Pierce loves games._

Matt doesn't understand why Elena, the real vampire Elena, gives Katherine her life. Maybe it's the fact that Elena wants the Gilberts to live on in Mystic Falls. And Katherine's human so the little Elena Gilbert he loved, in more ways than one, leaves on adventures with the Salvatore's.

He doesn't know which Salvatore she is with now, she's plays both like a fool, but Elena sends him texts, emails, calls and really expensive stuff from all over the world. Making most of the town wonder if he's a drug dealer. But he's happy for her.

And he's happy for the new Elena Gilbert.

Somehow Matt and Katherine become friends, probably because of the ruse they first started, but somehow they become real friends. Katherine's human and happy.

She went to college and became a lawyer but she stayed in Mystic Falls, for unknown reasons, to live as Elena.

Matt watches the new Elena Gilbert sit and laugh with her brother Jeremy. He finds it strange that the woman who killed Jeremy is hugging and telling everyone that her brother has returned home.

And somehow, hell be known to Matt, Jeremy calls Katherine his sister.

Jeremy returns home often, with his normal wife Hannah, he's happy for his friend. Who got out of Mystic Falls and started a normal life.

Matt usually joins them for dinner when Jeremy's home. They sit and talk and laugh and mention things Katherine has to pretend she was there for because Hannah's there. It's quite fun watching this old vampire now human squirm in annoyance that she has to pretend to remember things.

His eyes glance over Katherine's stomach; the bump is growing bigger.

Katherine Elena Gilbert-Sanders is expecting her first child, in over five hundred years. Katherine tells him that Mark, the man she somehow seduced to marry her and move to this dreaded place, thinks it's a girl.

"Elijah's not going to be happy about that."

He looks up and sees _her_.

* * *

Rebekah Mikaelson looks the same, though she's looks in her twenties to Matt, it could be that he still thinks of her as his friend, the girl who wanted to be human, not a 1000 plus year old original vampire.

"Oh well let bygones be bygones." Rebekah states as she looks around the room. "I suppose no one in this horrid town remembers me." Her blue eyes stare into his. "I let you travel the world with me and you haven't updated this wine list at all?"

Matt places a huge grin on his face as Rebekah's blue eyes shine even brighter. "I didn't have a nagging blonde to tell me it needed updated." He gets out a glass and pours her favorite, well not her favorite but the closest thing he has, and gets out a beer for himself.

"Oh right Caroline isn't here. Kind of strange this town doesn't have a blonde bossing everyone around."

Brining up Caroline's name hurts him. Sure Rebekah and him haven't seen each other in years, since that good bye kiss, but they still had mutual friends. Friends that Rebekah sees and he doesn't.

"That brother of yours still holding her hostage?"

"Ha. I'm fully aware that Caroline is not a hostage." She leans closer and giggles. "Between you and me I think Nik is more of the prisoner in that relationship."

Rebekah's giggles bring him back to the past. Where she just got un-daggered and started Mystic Falls High. She was bossy, aggressive, and spiteful. With all her short coming Rebekah charmed her way into Matt's life.

* * *

The summer he spent with her was the best summer of his life. Don't get him wrong hanging out as a teen with his friends, before the supernatural came, was great but seeing the world was different.

Rebekah had always been different.

If it was another time or place or **reality** where a human Rebekah moved to Mystic Falls with her brothers and he was just an all-around American boy with no supernatural friends then things could have been different.

* * *

"She hasn't visited me." Matt states worried that Caroline had gone to the dark side ever since Tyler left her and she went to New Orleans. "At least Tyler sends me strays when a full moon is near. The Lockwood house is useful for something." He leaves out the part that he can barely afford living there; that he is still the small town quarterback making ends meet.

"Hey." Rebekah places her hand on top of his. "I know it's hard that everyone's moved on but Caroline has found a place where vampires are tolerated. She can walk the streets without the locals suspecting anything. As for Elena I think she's just enjoying not being Elena Gilbert the girl who everyone needed to save every millisecond for eternity."

"You talk to Elena?" He questions thinking more and more about how much those two hated each other. He almost died because of that.

"We talk on occasion." Rebekah states as if it is nothing. "You need to move on. Silas is dead, that crazy gypsy guy is out of your head and from what I can see this town has calmed down on the supernatural occurrences."

Matt gives her a look, like how the hell has she kept up with his life when he hadn't a clue about hers?

"Caroline still is chatty." She comments before he has the nerve to ask. "I'm sorry it seems that they all abandoned you."

Matt knows she is being sincere; she always has been with him. But once she had promised him she wouldn't leave him behind but somehow she did.

"What do you want Rebekah?"

"I want you to shut up and kiss me."

* * *

Matt slams Rebekah against his apartment's door. He's very glad that the bar's upstairs apartment hasn't been rented out yet. The kiss is just as fierce as the one they had when they departed.

His broad shoulders drape over her as her hands make their way to his neck. Matt doesn't feel the chill of Rebekah's finger tips like he used to; it was one of his turn ons. The smell of violet and lemongrass still lingers on her but the chill of touching a vampire is not there.

He pulls away, "What's going on?"

She rolls her eyes at him as she pulls him back to her, crushing their lips together.

Matt pulls away again. "I mean it Beks! Where have you been? What have you been up to?"

Rebekah looks at him. "You'd rather talk about how my brother destroyed his protégé to rule a town? Or how about the fact I had to kill the mother of Nik's child while she was in the process of giving birth so the baby could survive?" She looks to Matt tears fill her eyes. "Her eyes haunt me every night. I'm the one who killed my niece's mother. I guess its poetic Nik killed my mother after all."

Matt looks at Rebekah, she's so fragile, her words make him think what she did was justice but those eyes state otherwise. "You did what you had to Rebekah."

"Don't you think I know that?" Rebekah screams as the living room drapes burst into flames.

Matt jumps backwards in shock making Rebekah sob even more. He's not sure what is going on but from what he remembers original vampires don't start fires with their minds.

"I'm sorry Matt I can't control it." Her blue eyes catch his, as she sits on the floor, like peace has overcome her the flames extinguish.

"Control what?" Matt looks at her questioning what has just happened.

She looks at him like a scared little girl; one who has so much of a troubled past that she can't let it go. And from what he knows about Rebekah's life he can understand.

"My magic."

"But vampires don't have magic Rebekah."

"When I'm bloody human I do."

"You're human?" Matt questions not sure how any of this could be happening. "But Katherine has the cure? And…"

"She's not dead." Rebekah cuts in. "I'm well aware of that. All I know is Katherine sent a vial of her blood to Elijah, probably from her guilt of moving on, and my honorable brother gave it to me."

Matt takes a seat next to Rebekah and scratches the back of his head unsure how to react. "How does it feel?"

"Wonderful."

Rebekah smiles, her smile always made Matt picture the original vampire who wanted to be desperately liked; the girl who loved too easily, the girl who did not choose her life, but this smile was different. It was softer; gentler. Like the world was off her shoulders. And it made him wonder if Rebekah had her humanity all along.


End file.
